NJSPCA to investigate West Deptford Twp. duck abuse

WEST DEPTFORD TWP. — Some residents in Forest Creek condominiums used to love opening their blinds to a nice view, that of a kind of community gathering point in the center of the development.

They liked to sit out in front of their units and talk as vigilant mother ducks waddling about, watching over their young. Although it’s not nature’s own provision, a retention pond in the center attracts the ducks, turtles and other wildlife.

But in recent months, the view has often been brutal, according to Mary Ann Naddeo, who heads the condominium association at the complex just off Jessup Road.

She and others here say area kids are making a sport of beating mother ducks, sometime to death, with sticks, bats and other objects and using the ducklings as makeshift baseballs to swat across the complex grounds, among other abuses.

Naddeo is in the process of filing a complaint on the matter with the New Jersey Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (NJSPCA), said NJSPCA investigator Theresa Cooper.

Cooper on Friday said her group’s investigation will begin once the paperwork is finished. She’s eager to start working on it shortly, she said.

Naddeo estimates the culprits range in age from about five to 13, but they’re not all Forest Creek residents. Some, she said, are from Rolling Brook and perhaps other nearby developments.

They typically carry out their acts between roughly 4 p.m. and 7 p.m. It all seems to have begun this past April, she said.

Some of the games include casting fishing lines and hooking ducks through the beak or other parts of the body, then flinging them about, she said. One duck suffered a hook embedded deep in the chest area.

Naddeo added that turtles have been found there pierced with hooks as well, bobbers attached. Victims of the same depraved sport, it seems.

“You hear the kids screaming, yelling, carrying on,” Naddeo said, “and you think at first they’re just playing. But then you see what they’re doing.”

Several show no fear when adults tell them to stop, she contends.

“The kids are saying ‘F you’ when we yell at them to put down the sticks and bats and stop beating the ducks,” she said.

“They killed two adult ducks right in front of us.”

Mother ducks trying to protect their young were not spared.

“The females wouldn’t leave their eggs,” Naddeo explained. “But the kids would beat them, then take the eggs.”

When one resident yelled at the kids to stop, she added, they simply began ripping branches off trees at the resident’s condominium, along with anything else they could grab on her property, and continued beating the ducks.

West Deptford police have responded numerous times to calls of the abuse. But there’s only so much they can do unless the children are caught or there is sufficient evidence to charge any individual.

William Harkins Jr., a U.S. Marine veteran and a roughly seven-year Forest Creek resident, concurred with Naddeo’s claims. He, too, said at least one youth hooked a duck with a fishing line.

The coordinator for Gloucester County’s Toys for Tots, a Marines program, Harkins also attested to the duck beatings.

“I holler when I can, when I see something,” he said. “Most of the time, the kids will stop. But some of them will dare you to do something.”

“The police are doing what they can, but there’s only so much they can do,” Harkins added.

As for the kids’ parents, Naddeo said many don’t seem concerned.

“I’ve met a few of their parents, the ones who care,” she stressed. “A few have talked to me, and we get somewhere.”

There are some, however, who defend their children’s behavior. Some seem to think the abuse is not illegal.

The fact is, New Jersey law prohibits killing, torturing, mutilating, beating or otherwise harming an animal needlessly, whether the animal is wild or domestic.

Such acts can be prosecuted as a fourth-degree crime. But if the victim animal is “cruelly killed,” state law reads, or dies from the mistreatment, or the offender has a prior conviction under the law, it can become a third-degree crime.

The recent incidents aren’t the first of animal cruelty to hit Forest Creek. Back in January of 2001, the state Division of Fish and Wildlife said a group of nine-year-old girls had ben luring turtles and ducks out of the retention pond and beating them with sticks.

The children had also been implicated in stuffing a kitten down a drain pipe.

Cooper, the SPCA investigator, said she wants to find out if charges are warranted in the current allegations. She said she hasn’t seen any of the ducks that were allegedly killed.

“Apparently, there are a lot of witnesses,” Cooper added. “And of course, I’ll speak to the accused.”

If the things described by residents are substantiated, she said, “It’s very disturbing to see that people think this is OK...They seem to think that, because it’s (concerning) ducks, that it’s not animal cruelty.”